The report begins with the premise that nowhere is lack of infrastructure more crucial and potentially transformational than in sub-Saharan Africa. The three major sources of external financing are: private participation in infrastructure investments; official development finance from multilateral institutions and most of the OECD-DAC donors; and official Chinese financing. The top recipients in sub-Saharan Africa of external financing in 2009-2012 were South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

This report offers recommendations on how to better exploit the political, technical, and financial synergies needed to address the infrastructure gap.